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As Executions Resume, So Do Questions of Fairness •
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US Executes First Inmate After Moratorium
By Tami Chappell
Reuters
Tuesday 06 May 2008
Jackson, Georgia - Georgia executed a convicted murderer on Tuesday, the first
person to be put to death in the United States since the Supreme Court ended
a de facto moratorium on capital punishment last month.
William Earl Lynd died by lethal injection at a prison in Jackson, central
Georgia, at 7:51 p.m. Lynd, 53, was convicted of shooting his girlfriend to
death in December 1988.
"Under the order of the court, the execution of William Earl Lynd has
been carried out," said Paul Czachowski, public affairs manager at the
Georgia Department of Corrections.
"The condemned declined to make a statement or offer a prayer," he
said, adding the execution began at 7:34 p.m.
In the hours before Lynd died, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a final request
for a stay filed by his lawyers.
Lynd's execution is the first since the same court on April 16 rejected a challenge
to the cocktail of three drugs used in most U.S. executions, which opponents
had argued inflicted unnecessary pain.
A nationwide pause in executions had been in effect since shortly after the
court said on September 25 it would hear an appeal by two death row inmates
in Kentucky against the use of the lethal drugs.
Last year, 42 people were put to death in the United States, the lowest number
since the 31 executions in 1994. But the 2007 number was artificially low because
of the Supreme Court case.
Fewer than 20 protesters opposed to the death penalty demonstrated outside
the prison in Jackson where Lynd was executed in an apparent indication that
the subject arouses few passions.
Demonstrators said they also planned protests in five other cities in the state.
"It's sad that the state of Georgia has put someone to death and is leading
the United States in the resumption of executions," said Laura Moye, chairwoman
of Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "It is said it is a
resumption of justice but instead we are being brutalized."
Appeal Rejected
After shooting Ginger Moore three times in the head and face, Lynd buried her
in a shallow grave. Soon afterward, as he drove to Ohio, he allegedly shot and
killed another woman but was never convicted of that crime.
The Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a bid by Lynd's lawyers to stop
the execution. They argued that experts who described the murder scene in court
had exaggerated.
Several states have scheduled executions since the moratorium ended, including
Virginia and Texas, which carries out more executions than any other state.
Lynd is the 1,100th person put to death since the Supreme Court lifted a temporary
ban on capital punishment in 1976. Since then, Texas has had 405 executions,
followed by Virginia with 98.
Lynd's last meal consisted of two pepper jack barbecue burgers with crispy
onions, baked potatoes with sour cream, bacon and cheese, and a large strawberry
milkshake, prison authorities said.
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Additional reporting by Matthew Bigg in Atlanta; editing by John O'Callaghan.
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As Executions Resume, So Do Questions of Fairness
By Shaila Dewan
The New York Times
Wednesday 07 May 2008
Raleigh, North Carolina - The release of the third death row inmate in six months
in North Carolina last week is raising fresh questions about whether states
are supplying capital-murder defendants with adequate counsel, even as an execution
on Tuesday night in Georgia ended a seven-month national suspension.
In all three cases, North Carolina appeals courts found that evidence that
would have favored the defendants was withheld from defense lawyers by prosecutors
or investigators. In two of the cases, including that of Levon Jones, who was
released on Friday after 14 years on death row, the courts said the defendants'
lawyers had failed to mount an adequate defense. Nationwide, Mr. Jones's
release was the sixth in a year.
John Holdridge, director of the A.C.L.U. Capital Punishment Project, which
provided representation for Mr. Jones, said the successful appeals showed that
the problem with the death penalty was not the method of execution -
the issue ruled on by the Supreme Court last month - but instead "poor
people getting lousy lawyers."
"All these states are gearing up to start executing people again, and
nobody seems to be concerned about these systemic problems," Mr. Holdridge
said.
On Tuesday evening, after the Supreme Court declined to stop it, the State
of Georgia conducted the first execution since the court ruled last month that
a method of lethal injection was not unconstitutional. William E. Lynd, 53,
was put to death by injection for the 1988 killing of his girlfriend, Ginger
Moore. No prisoners had been executed in the United States since last September,
while the court was considering the issue.
During that same period, Georgia's new public defender system came under
attack by politicians and was recently forced to cut more than 40 positions.
That system, established after a series of lawsuits, was patterned after one
North Carolina put in place in 2001, which was considered a national model.
But not many other states have followed suit, said Robin Maher, director of
the American Bar Association's Death Penalty Representation Project.
"I wish I could say that things have gotten a lot better, but in fact
I can say with confidence that things have changed not much at all,"
Ms. Maher said. "We are seeing the same kinds of egregiously bad lawyering
that we saw 10 or 15 years ago, for a variety of reasons, including inadequate
funding."
Of the 36 states that allow the death penalty, only about 10 have statewide
capital-defense systems, one of the practices recommended by the Bar Association.
The three men released in North Carolina were all convicted in the mid-1990s,
before a barrage of criticism of the state's capital punishment system,
including an investigation in 2000 by The Charlotte Observer that showed that
16 death row inmates had been represented by lawyers who were later disbarred.
North Carolina made a number of changes that included establishing the statewide
defender system and broader discovery rules for defense lawyers. Beginning in
1996, defense lawyers working on appeals in death penalty cases were permitted
to view all investigative files pertaining to the case, and in 2004 the same
right was extended to the defense in all criminal cases.
Joseph B. Cheshire, the lawyer for one of the three released men, Jonathon
Hoffman, credited the discovery rules with bringing to light what he called
a pattern of wrongful convictions.
The court-appointed trial lawyers for Mr. Hoffman, convicted of killing a jewelry
store owner during a robbery, were not told that the main witness against him
had been paid for his cooperation and was given immunity from prosecution and
a reduced sentence for bank robbery. Mr. Cheshire said that a copy of the district
attorney's notes was altered to conceal those facts before they were
provided to the defense for discovery. Mr. Hoffman was released in December.
Mr. Cheshire is also the chairman of the state's Indigent Defense Services
Commission. Thanks to those two changes, he said, "the likelihood today
of someone being convicted who's innocent is far less than it was five
or six years ago."
The man who prosecuted Mr. Jones, however, does not concede that the defendant
was innocent. The prosecutor, G. Dewey Hudson, said that he still believed that
Mr. Jones was involved in the murder, but that he could not retry him because
crucial witnesses had died and one had recanted.
"It has taken 15 years for the court system to make the determination
that Mr. Jones's original counsel was ineffective," Mr. Hudson
said in a statement released Friday. "As a result of this delay, the
State has been severely handcuffed in its obligation to prosecute Mr. Jones
for the murder of Leamon Grady."
Cassy Stubbs, the A.C.L.U. lawyer who represented Mr. Jones, said all of the
witnesses from the initial trial were still living.
Mr. Jones was convicted of robbing and shooting Mr. Grady, a bootlegger in
Duplin County. The main witness against Mr. Jones was a former girlfriend, Lovely
Lorden, who testified that she had gone with him to Mr. Grady's house
the night of the killing and heard gunshots while waiting outside.
State courts rejected Mr. Jones's claims of ineffective legal counsel.
But a federal judge, Terrence W. Boyle, later found that Mr. Jones's
trial lawyers failed to do a background check that would have revealed Ms. Lorden's
criminal background, failed to interview her before trial and failed to obtain
copies of inconsistent statements she made. They also failed to present evidence
that Mr. Jones might be mentally ill, cognitively impaired, or had a history
of substance abuse, the judge found, information that could have saved him from
a death sentence.
"Jones received two appointed attorneys that spent virtually no time
or effort investigating the offense or his background," Judge Boyle said.
In subsequent hearings and affidavits, it became clear that Ms. Lorden was
a frequent police informant and that, contrary to testimony at the trial, she
had known when she came forward in the Grady case that there was a $4,000 reward
available.
Though Ms. Stubbs said that there was evidence that pointed to another man
in the killing, Mr. Hudson said in a telephone interview that he considered
the case closed.
Mr. Jones's release came on the heels of that of Glen E. Chapman, who
was convicted of killing two women, Betty Jean Ramseur and Tenene Y. Conley,
in Union County in 1992. Judge Robert C. Ervin of State Superior Court ruled
in April that Mr. Chapman's lawyers had failed their client, noting that
one of them could recall interviewing only one witness and had visited the crime
scenes for the first time two weeks before trial. The lawyers had both admitted
to heavy drinking during other trials.
Judge Ervin also found that Dennis Rhoney, then a police detective, knowingly
presented false and misleading information on the stand. The State Bureau of
Investigation is reviewing perjury claims against Mr. Rhoney.
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